Transcripts

Chris Dorsi:
And one of the best things that a homeowner can do right now is to walk down to your furnace or your air-conditioning system and find the furnace filter in there.

Chris Dorsi, author of The Homeowner's Handbook to Energy Efficiency…

Because that filter is easy to replace or wash - some of them may cost a dollar or two for a new one, and replacing those can save the typical family up to fifty or a hundred dollars per year.

If you're a homeowner, Chris says you need to understand the importance of having your furnace or air conditioner serviced by a professional.

There is no piece of equipment in your home that is more prone to poor efficiency because of bad maintenance than an air conditioner. In other words without annual servicing on an air conditioner, it can actually run at maybe fifty percent of its efficiency. The same thing is true of your heating system to a little bit lesser extent.

Adjusting the heat in your home either manually or with a programmable thermostat can really save money.

No, you don't want to start thermostat wars in your family - where one person turns it up and one person turns it down and it goes back and forth all day. But you can save up to ten or fifteen percent of your heating bills by adjusting your thermostat to a more economical setting when you're away from the house. If everybody goes to work or goes to school, there's no point in heating that house all day. Now some people may question whether you can save money by turning that thermostat up and down and the answer is yes in almost every case.

At somethingyoushouldknow.net I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.